She Tells Herself That It's Enough
by Jennifer131
Summary: Clintasha/BlackHawk: Natasha's POV as she reflects on her relationship with Clint. Unrequited love - poor Tasha.


**Rated for one lonely little naughty word. Thought it was better to be on the safe side.**

**Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Trust me, if I owned Clint none of you would ever see him again!**

**For fans of Clint. Not sure where Clintasha die-hards really fall on the whole unrequited issue.**

**A little bit sad. Sorry Natasha fans.**

.

Natasha accepts the mug of coffee from Clint and takes a seat at the kitchen counter, watching as he and Steve prepare a breakfast of gut-busting proportions. The two men are enjoying themselves and Natasha is more than happy to sit back and observe.

She sips the coffee, strong and black and exactly the way she likes it. Clint's the only one who ever gets it right. The only one who ever took the time to learn how to do it just so. She hates that he does that. She hates how he makes it so difficult not to love him.

She is a master at controlling her emotions but he has shattered every one of her defences without even trying. He has no idea how easily he made her fall in love with him. She resented him for it at first but resents herself more for her weakness. She would have been disciplined severely for such weakness in her old life, she muses bitterly, but nothing the Red Room could have devised would have been crueller the punishment she receives daily from Clint himself.

He has killed for her, taken bullets and brutal beatings for her. He has saved her life more times than she can count. He knows her better than anyone else alive; he knows what she is capable of, what she has done, and he stills believes she is worth dying for.

He's there for her whenever she needs him, without question or hesitation. He washes the blood out of her hair when she's too exhausted to move. He cleans and stitches and dresses the wounds she can't reach. He sings to her when her nightmares leave her shaking and makes sure he's around when she's so frustrated a punching bag just wouldn't cut it.

He is her partner, her confidant and her best friend.

But he doesn't love her.

She tells herself that it's enough that she has someone in her life who will always have a perfect cup of coffee waiting for her in the morning. Someone who always seems to know when she's in the mood for pancakes or bacon or nothing at all without needing to ask. Someone who understands that conversation is for _after _that first cup of coffee and is happy to wait her out.

It's not enough, not really. But it's all she has. She sips the coffee slowly, and watches as he makes her breakfast.

.

.

They've been in the training room for hours, working out alongside each other, both gearing up for their sparring session. Natasha moves fluidly from one yoga position to the next, stretching her sinewy muscles and warming up for the sparring. As usual she uses the various contortions to her advantage, angling herself to hide the fact that she has been watching her partner for the last thirty minutes. Clint is across the room, currently alternating between sets of chin-lifts and press-ups. He's got a couple more sets of both to go before he'll head over to watch her finish up.

She knows that when he watches her it's in open appreciation of her grace and strength, that he admires her body as an exceptionally deadly example of the female form, and nothing more. She can and does manipulate and captivate and arouse any man she chooses to with that body. Any man, she muses bitterly, except him.

When they first met he had taken her by surprise and subdued her embarrassingly quickly. Overwhelmed by his superior strength and speed she had resorted to every seduction play she had in her arsenal. He had resisted them all, even smirking at her more explicit attempts and infuriating her beyond belief. Looking back, knowing him now as well as she does, she realises that he _had_ been affected by her. Physically at least. It offers some small comfort knowing that she'd achieved that much.

At the beginning of their partnership at S.H.I.E.L.D. she had continued to try to bait him, as much to get under his skin as to claw back some of her pride. He'd called her on it almost straight away and told her to quit it. They could either be partners and friends, or they could fuck. He let her choose. At the time she'd been so enticed by the idea of a real friendship, one with no obligation or expectation of sex, of finally having someone to watch her back, that she'd barely considered the alternative. She's plagued by that choice now. She'd never take back what they've been through together, never regret what they are to each other. She'd never change any of that simply for the opportunity to bed him. His alternative was sex, and she's not so deluded that she thinks he meant anything more than that. But the childish side of her that fell in love with him, the side he revealed in her, wishes she could have had it all.

It's never been an option though. Despite his rebel reputation and laid back attitude, for all the jokes and pranks and black humour, Clint is a professional. It took her several months to see past all the masks and fronts to recognise just why he was so highly regarded, how seriously he took his job, how meticulously he planned every mission and how much his position at S.H.I.E.L.D. meant to him. And how he'd allow nothing to jeopardise that. In choosing to become his partner, she put herself forever off limits. It was only later that she began to question the wisdom of that decision.

He's standing at the edge of the wide mat she's using, watching her with his usual easy grin. She finishes her demanding routine, the familiar thrill tickling up her spine as she performs for him. She slowly unfolds to standing.

"Ready?" he asks and she nods, raising an eyebrow.

"Always. Are you?" she teases, knowing he's a little touchy about losing to her the last three days in a row.

"I'll show you just how ready I am," he growls, stalking over to the sparring mats. She suppresses a shiver. If he's going to keep growling like that she's just going to have to keep winning.

He barely gives her time to reach the mat before he attacks her. She isn't surprised and it only takes a second before they fall into a straightforward rhythm of block and attack. They're both too good at this. It's why they work out for so long before sparring, so that they can work out some of the built up tension and aggression that comes from the relative inertia between missions before facing each other on the mats. It keeps the injuries sustained minor and trips to the med-bay minimal.

Usually after around twenty minutes of this back and forth, one or other of them tends to get bored and increases the strength of the blows, throws in a couple of dirty moves or feints and the fight is on. They regularly draw a crowd; rookies are actively encouraged to come and watch and maybe learn how it's really done. They know each other backwards and know exactly how to do this without pulling punches yet without causing serious damage. He trusts that she can block his uppercut before it breaks her jaw, she knows that he has the speed to dodge her roundhouse kick before she fractures his skull. There's no point in going easy on each other – they need to be able to do this for real and if she learns how to escape a chokehold because he's choked her out a couple of times, or if he learns how to deliver a headbut through a broken nose to secure the win, then it's worth the pain.

She tells herself that she doesn't itch for this, for the ultimate excuse to touch him and be touched by him. To have his complete attention, to have that killer focus trained on her for however long it takes for one of them to best the other. It's not always a spectacular finish. It's not always a knockout or a break or a gush of blood. More often than not it's a subtle acknowledgement between them that today he's on better form or she's got the edge over him. They never submit, never tap-out or give up. It would never occur to either of them that that was an option.

Afterwards she catalogues the bruises he's left littered across her otherwise flawless skin, determined to make it that much harder for him to land the same blows again. He won this time; he was faster and they both knew it. She's going to miss the growl, replaced for now with his infuriating shit-eating grin. But she ghosts her fingers over all the places he's marked her and she can't bring herself to mind.

.

.

It's cruellest when she's reminded of what he will never give her. When he flirts with other S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, medical staff, beautiful women on their rare down-time together. He flirts with her too, constantly, but it's different. With her he flirts out of habit, to amuse or irritate her or just to fill the silence. Never to charm or attract or seduce her. He's good too, really good. When they go out drinking he rarely leaves alone at the end of the night. With his combination of looks, humour, easy confidence and those archery-honed arms, when he turns it on he's virtually irresistible.

Occasionally, to her disgust, she finds herself imagining that it's her in Clint's sights. As he chats with a girl in a bar she imagines those grey-blue sniper's eyes focused on _her_. His calloused fingers tracing over _her_ skin and through _her_ hair. Imagines his gruff, steady voice teasing _her_, making _her_ laugh, telling her all those things he tells them that lead inevitably to his bed. She doesn't mind him leaving her alone. It's implied that on these nights out, after drinking together, laughing, maybe even dancing, that one or both of them will hook up. It's practically the only opportunity they get. He always says goodnight though, albeit sometimes from across the room with a smirk and a lift of the eyebrows as he's led out the door.

She doesn't really mind his string of one night stands. They're as meaningless to him as hers are. It's the dating that unsettles her.

He doesn't date that often, how could he given what they do? So when he does make the effort, it does mean something. Natasha knows his history. She knows that he has crippling trust issues; it makes the absolute trust he has in her so much more valuable than she'd ever thought possible. She also knows that every single person he's ever loved has either left or betrayed him.

But still he tries. She watches sadly every time as he tries to trust, tries to love, but can never quite get past the defences he's built for himself over the years. It always starts out well. Luckily for her he knows her aversion to this stuff, _at least as it applies to everyone else_, so she's spared the details and the only evidence of his romantic happiness is that she sees him a little less at mealtimes and she wakes from a few more of her nightmares without him there to soothe her.

But then something inside him hits the self-destruct button and it's all over. When he feels himself getting too attached, or if he catches himself letting his guard down, something seems to snap and he gets out before he gets hurt. He still longs for it though. So much that he was even married for a time.

She remembers how he came back from a week of leave with a wife and a goofy grin on his face. She remembers crying herself to sleep for the first time in two decades. How he misinterpreted her sullenness for disapproval of the general marriage thing, or perhaps even that she was insulted he'd done it on the quiet without her. He'd tried so hard to make it work, but she remembers him confiding to her about the arguments, usually about his trust issues or his emotional distance or his lack of communication. She remembers feeling a strange relief for him when it finally imploded.

It never impacted on work though. Nothing ever has. He's always able to harness his anger or pain or grief and mould it to make him harder, stronger, more focused. It's what she admires most about him. She was taught to disregard emotion, push it aside in order to do her job. But he _uses_ it. It's why she's always felt that ultimately he has the edge over her. And if it means he hits a little harder for a while during training, if those sparring sessions run an hour or two longer than usual, if the bruises take a little longer to disappear, then so be it. She will always be there. Because he will never leave her.

Clint will never love her the way she loves him. But he will always have her coffee ready, always make her the right breakfast. He will stand by her when others would shrink away. He will always know when she needs space, when she needs to talk, when she needs to beat the crap out of someone, or when she just needs a good ass-kicking. He can make her laugh on her darkest days. He can scare the nightmares away. He will always have her back. He will _always _be there for her.

She tells herself that it's enough.

One day she hopes it will be true.


End file.
